Existential Crisis in Ikea

I had a revelation walking round Ikea the past weekend. And it wasn't that the storage solution in my own home is inefficient.

I've often thought I'm not the best consumer. I'd even go as far as to say I've prided myself on this. 

I also am quite good in that, if I go to the shops for a £10 item I need, I don't also come away with £20 worth of stuff I don't need. I try to be rational about my purchases and I try not to be too material in my desires. Of course I like having stuff, but I try not to let my stuff define me.

I also try to buy stuff based on merit rather than association and I'd be curious to know how much of my decision making is more influenced by subtle advertising cues than I realise. I am aware that I speak as a consumer in a first world consumer culture. 

For example, I have an iPhone 5. I believe I bought an iPhone initially because my old phone was falling apart so I wanted a new phone (which is not a necessity, I know, but definitely not an extravagant want for the society I live in). I knew a lot of people with iPhones and knew from talking to them that it would fulfil the requirements I had of it well. I believe I didn't get an iPhone because they were the new shiny must-have toy. I got the iPhone 5 because my iPhone 3 literally fell apart after years of service - not because I wanted the (then) newest shiniest phone.

Now a visit to Ikea really weirded me out the other day in a way that I think I'm often weirded out by big shops, but not usually on this scale.

The shop is immense, as I'm sure you're already aware, and laid out in part as little perfect rooms furnished beautifully entirely in Ikea products. It's clearly aspirational marketing done well. The aim is simply that you see these rooms, you aspire to have a room just like it and set to acquiring all the individual components in that collection to achieve this. Along the way, you pick up things that previously you have never needed/wanted/realised such a thing even existed but having seen them in this setting you need them to complete your room so it looks as cute and cosy as the in-store one.

I think I'm normally quite resilient to this sort of thing and quite pragmatic about buying only things I want or need (inasmuch as I "need" anything) and ignoring extraneous fluff.

However, as I went round Ikea I got to thinking about why I'm so bullish about this. I began wondering if it's less to do with a strong mind and having decided on my own individuality, and more to do with not being able to imagine ever not being broke.

It occurred to me that aspirational marketing only works if you can conceive of achieving the lifestyle being sold. I consider any month where I haven't accrued bank charges for going over my overdraft limit a success so the thought of being able to afford a lovely new storage solution for a couple of hundred pounds is ludicrous. Let alone all the rest of the stuff that goes with it. So instead I pooh-pooh it. It's a defence. And once I opened the gate in the defence and peered through it, I became horribly downcast in the middle of Ikea and couldn't have sat on the floor and cried..
Don't get me wrong - I don't have desire to be rich, just comfortable enough that booking a hotel room for a friend's wedding doesn't leave me terrified about how I'm going to get through the rest of the month.

It's the same reason why, although travel and far-away places excite me, I never read travel magazines or reviews. They just make me deeply unhappy that I can't conceive of going to these places.

It was this printed canvas that did it:

because it was the first time I couldn't pooh pooh it quite so easily because I genuinely like the picture. Klimt is one of my favourite artists. I genuinely wanted this. I tried to tell myself I didn't just like all the other stuff and I didn't really want it. Besides, I can't afford it anyway. Then thought that I don't have a house to hang it in anyway. Nor do I see how I ever will do. So then what was the point of wanting any of this stuff because where would I put it? I became sad, not because I couldn't afford the things in Ikea, but because I didn't have the option of affording the things in Ikea.
Thus began something of a cascade of disappointment: I became upset I couldn't afford these things in Ikea, upset I couldn't afford a house, upset that I am 31 and not better off, upset that I worked every day at a so-so job that helps accrue more finances for a global corporation that gives me just enough money to ensure I can afford to come in and do the same tomorrow, upset that I'm bright and have so much potential (teacher's words - not mine) and I feel I'm squandering it in the years when I should be building up something awesome, upset that I haven't really left much of a mark on the world.

This is why I can't have nice things. Going to look at them triggers an existential crisis for me.

First World problems, eh?

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